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Difference between UTL_MAIL and UTL_SMTP in PL/SQL

As a developer, you might have encountered a situation where client needed error or warning messages after certain programs are executed. Monitoring program continuously will be obviously waste of hours for them. So they demand automatic mails to be delivered to them whenever programs goes in error or warning. This requirement can be fulfilled in PL/SQL using UTL_MAIL and UTL_SMTP packages. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)is used by both to transmit mails over the network.

To help you in deciding which one to use, below are the differences between UTL_MAIL and UTL_SMTP

UTL_MAIL

UTL_SMTP

Introduced in Oracle 10g and thereafter

Introduced in Oracle 8i and thereafter

Easier to use as compared to UTL_SMTP

Older version and require some knowledge of SMTP

Requires parameter SMTP_OUT_SERVER to get initialized in init.ora file

Does not require any initialization parameter

Does not require SMTP connection to be opened explicitly

Requires SMTP connection to be opened explicitly inside the package

UTL_SMTP.OPEN_CONNECTION(host => 'smtp.google.com', port => 465);

Message priority can be defined

Message priority cannot be defined

Host and Port are not required to be passed in code

Host and Port are required to be passed in code

You can define MIME Type of attachment. Default is 'text/plain; charset=us-ascii'

UTL_MAIL and UTL_SMTP both are good except UTL_MAIL is much simpler to configure than UTL_SMTP. You can check your Oracle database version in which your application is running. Choice should be definitely UTL_MAIL if your database version is 10g and above.

To err is human, so if I have missed any points, please mention them in comments. I will incorporate it in this difference table. If you liked this post then drop comments of appreciation.

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